Smart Infrastructure NA

The sun-drenched city of Miami has been named as the world's leading city when it comes to implementing smart connected streetlights. Miami beat-off stiff competition from European cities Paris and Madrid to take top spot.

IoT Analytics compiled a comprehensive and detailed analysis of smart street lighting and surveyed a total of 111 cities overall. The research focused on the deployment of connected streetlights across North America (36 cities) Europe (35 cities) Asia Pacific (33 cities) and the rest of the world (7 cities).

IoT analytics provides market insight and intelligence with regards to emerging technologies such as the Internet of Things, Machine-to-Machine (M2M) and Industry 4.0 sectors. It's report entitled ‘Top 10 Cities Implementing Connected Streetlights' indicates which cities are the forefront of embracing digital transformation in the management of streetlights, and highlights how other cities can learn from these initiatives in an effort to accelerate their digital transformation goals.

The top 10 are:

1 Miami, US (500,000 connected streetlights)

2 Paris, France (280,000)

3 Madrid, Spain (225,000)

4 Los Angeles, US (165,000)

5 Jakarta, Indonesia (140,000)

6 Montreal, Canada (132,500)

7 Birmingham, UK (130,000)

8 Dongguan, China (120,000)

9 Buenos Aires, Argentina (108,500)

10 Milan, Italy (101,060)

Miami's Climate Action Plan: Miami City Council launched its own Climate Action Plan in which it committed to achieving a carbon dioxide emission reduction of 25 per cent by 2020 (compared to 2006 levels) as indicated in the MiPlan, Miami's Climate Action Plan.

The conversion of legacy streetlights into smart LED streetlights is one of the strategies enabling city governing bodies to reduce energy consumption, which in turn, reduces carbon dioxide emissions within their jurisdiction. The roll-out in Miami was performed by the technology firm Itron and the utility company Florida Power & Light. The city benefits from annual energy savings of 44 per cent on previous costs for legacy streetlights.

Global drivers: Globally, IoT Analytics has projected that the connected streetlights market spend will surpass US$3.6 billion in 2023 - and will continue to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21 per cent.

Experts have stated that the growth is fueled by government policies to reduce carbon dioxide emission, declining cost of technologies, smart city initiatives, and increasing awareness on the benefits of connected streetlights which go beyond energy savings.